The popularity of call centers has increased dramatically. A typical call center includes a number of agents who field inbound telephone calls and place outbound telephone calls. Each agent has an associated station that includes a personal computer, a phone pad and a headset. The agent may place outbound sales calls to a potential customer or field inbound calls (such as 800 number calls) from potential customers. The agents are typically organized into groups and have associated supervisors who are responsible for managing the agent. Each agent may receive or place calls from different business clients. For example, a first agent may field calls for an 800 number associated with company A and a second agent may field calls for an 800 number associated with company B.
One of the difficulties that has arisen in such call centers is the difficulty in monitoring the phone activity of the agents. Specifically, it has been difficult for a supervisor to obtain useful information about the activities of the agents in a timely fashion. The computer/telephony integration monitoring server (CTIMS) described in copending application No. 08/940,547 entitled "Computer/Telephony Integration Monitoring Server," which was filed on Sep. 30, 1997, serves as an integral portion of a computerized monitoring system that monitors activities of agents within a call center. The monitoring system may gather status information and statistics regarding agent activities. The gathered status information and statistics may be displayed as part of a graphical user interface (GUI) that is provided by an application program.
The CTIMS gathers statistics regarding agent calling activities and maintains status or information regarding agents. These statistics may be passed to a client application program. The statistics provided by CTIMS may include statistics which are classified by call center, agent, supervisor or business client. The statistical information may also be categorized by call type, such as the number of outbound calls, the number of internal calls and the number of inbound calls that are handled by a particular agent. The useful activity performed by CTIMS is actually performed by a process running on a server computer.
One of the difficulties with the CTIMS approach discussed in the above-identified patent application is that the approach is not very resistant to failure of the CTIMS. If the CTIMS fails, there is no mechanism for gathering data regarding agent activities while the CTIMS remains in a failure state. As such, there is a need to enhance the ability of the monitoring system to withstand failure of the CTIMS.